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Forget the Fluff—Faye Mandell Makes “The Power of Now” Actually Work The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is an excellent book, filled with verbiage that describes one life-changing concept: staying in the present moment. However, when I read it, it was also confusing and somewhat vague. It tells you to live in the moment, let go of the ego, and transcend suffering. Cool. But how? So I went searching and found Faye Mandell's book, Self-Empowerment: A Gateway to a New Way of Liv

(Based on Michael Alexiuk’s book - Power Therapy) In the last post, I said it like it is: If you want strong mental health, stop coping. Start doing hard things that matter. Michael Alexiuk’s Power Therapy lays out the core formula: Difficult + Relevant + Achievable = Personal Power. But how do you actually find and build those kinds of goals? Here’s your guide. 🔥 Step 1: Choose Something That Scares You a Little Let’s be clear: this is not about self-torture. It’s about fri

(Based on Michael Alexiuk’s Power Therapy) I discovered this book almost 30 years ago and it completely changed my life. It also indirectly presents what's wrong with the entire mental health system. We’ve been told a lie about our mental health—that it’s about “managing symptoms,” “practicing self-care,” and “being kind to yourself.” That’s not strength. That’s survival. And survival is not the same thing as healing. Michael Alexiuk’s Power Therapy cuts through the noise wit

We all have a "shadow"—the desires, feelings, and memories we'd rather cram in a back closet than admit to ourselves. First described by Carl Jung, the shadow is not "bad"; it's just the unloved aspect of you. If you don't address it, it will run your life from behind the scenes (think unexplained anger, jealousy, or self-sabotage). I know this has been something we here at ETS have all dealt with! But when you approach it with curiosity, you regain energy, creativity, and co

The vagus nerve is the body’s long, wandering superhighway from the brainstem to the gut. When it’s fir ing well (“high vagal tone”), your heart rate steadies, cortisol drops, and the mind shifts from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. Good news: you can nudge that switch yourself! Five Fast Ways to Flip the Switch 4-6 Breath Reset - Breathe so the exhale is longer than the inhale—for example, 4-second inhale / 6-second exhale- for five minutes. The longer out-breath tells t

We often believe that our suffering comes from our circumstances — a broken relationship, financial stress, work pressure, or unresolved trauma. But what if the real source of suffering isn’t what happens to us, but how we think about what happens to us? That’s the core idea explored in Joseph Nguyen’s thought-provoking book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think . It’s not just a catchy title — it’s a powerful message about the root of human distress. The Real Source of Sufferi

First published in 1961, Thomas Szasz’s The Myth of Mental Illness remains one of the most influential—and controversial—books in the history of psychiatry. With sharp insight and unwavering conviction, Szasz challenges one of the core assumptions of modern mental health care: that so-called "mental illnesses" are medical conditions in the same sense as physical diseases. Instead, he argues, they are problems in living—complex human struggles that cannot and should not be red

Let's stop sugarcoating it. Let’s talk about the modern mental health system. Not the glossy brochures. Not the polished websites. I’m talking about the system as it really operates — a cold, bureaucratic machine that keeps people stuck and calls it "care." A system that traps people in cycles of dependency, sedation, surveillance, and shame. It’s time we say it plainly: The mental health system is more like a prison than a pathway to healing. And, I'm not talking about the

Anxiety is something most of us feel at some point in our lives. It’s that racing heart before a big meeting, the tight chest when overwhelmed, or the restless thoughts that keep you up at night. What many people don’t realize is that anxiety is a completely normal and even necessary part of the human experience . From an evolutionary perspective, anxiety helped our ancestors survive. It’s a built-in alarm system that keeps us alert and prepared for danger. But in modern life

For decades, addiction has been widely viewed as a chronic, relapsing brain disease—a model promoted by institutions like the National Institute on Drug Abuse and 12-step programs. However, the Freedom Model of Addiction , developed by Slate, Scheeren, and Dunbar (2017), offers a radically different view. It asserts that addiction is not a disease but a habit —a repeated, voluntary behavior based on perceived benefits. Like nail biting or overeating, substance use becomes hab

In an era when psychiatric treatment often meant forced hospitalization and heavy medications, two radically compassionate movements stood apart: The Soteria Project of the 1970s and the Quaker-run asylums of the 1800s. Though separated by centuries, both share a groundbreaking belief—that people experiencing mental distress can heal through kindness, dignity, and community , not coercion or chemicals. The Soteria Project: A Radical Experiment in Healing In the early 1970s,

For those who don’t believe that our very early years, especially if there was trauma involved, affect our adulthood, I suggest you reflect on where those self-destructive thoughts and behaviors come from. You most likely didn’t learn to think of yourself as a piece of shit or drink to blacking out or hide out in your house binging on doughnuts in just the last few years. Case in point: Today is the day before my school semester starts. And EVERY SINGLE DAY before EACH and EV

Pain, suffering, loss, guilt, shame, trauma, tragedy, death, violence, horror, grief, surround all of us on a daily basis. Life is really f*cking hard! It is easy to get swept up in feeling scared, vulnerable, angry, and hopeless. I was talking to a colleague the other day who said he felt that “ we are living in Hell right now .” However, I completely disagree. Yes, the world can be very, very harsh. There are horrific things happening every second of every day to many peopl

Stop screwing around - get pissed off and remember who you the f*ck you are, and get your life back! I’m saying this to whoever needs to hear it because I wish someone had said it to me - many times. I wasted so much precious time drinking too much or sitting at a casino or over-stuffing my face with crappy food or working jobs I hated, or staying in bad relationships way too long. All for falsely feeling in control, safe, and numb. And, if reading the first statement stings

I was asked by a colleague this week, “ Do you have a certain focus to your work? I mean, is there a central thread to what you do ?” That’s a great question, and the answer is a resounding “ YES !” So, I “ do ” several different things – solution-centered life coaching, run an empowerment workshop, teach the martial arts, and I work at both a homeless center and a residence for folks with mental illness. BUT, with ALL of these things, I have the exact same personal focus – t

Please don’t beat the shit out of yourself for being anxious sometimes. It’s perfectly normal. Life is goddamned scary as f*ck. Just turn on the news. If you don’t have some anxiety, you are a sociopath. And, FYI, we are the only creatures on Earth that know something is coming in our future. Not dolphins, or dogs, or chimpanzees. Do you know what we are singularly aware of that is coming? Yup – death. We know that someday, our friends, our family, and ourselves are going to

“ The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. ” Joseph Campbell To embrace this privilege, you have to remember Who. The. F*ck. You. Are. Who you REALLY are. NOT who your parents taught you that you are. NOT who your assh*le peers in school told you you are. NOT who your f*cked up and traumatized brain continuously tells you who you are. NOT who your significant other tells you who you are. NOT your friends, the media, social media, the so-called professionals, your col

People ask me all the time why I help the homeless, mentally ill, drug addicts. They ask why I even give a sh*t about these “ losers ” who have obviously “chosen” to live the life they live. Ironically, these people questioning me are many of the same people who quote Jesus, Gandhi and other spiritual leaders on Facebook. So, why I have I chosen to spend my life helping these “ undeserving ” people? Because – they are my brothers and sisters. They are human beings just like m

As long as I can remember I go through periods – daily, weekly – where I feel horribly “ off ”. I’m bored, irritable, anxious, sad, empty, obsessed and about a hundred other negative adjectives I could use to describe how I feel. Over the years I have been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety disorder, ADHD, depression, OCD, and “ mild ” bipolar disorder. LOL, all the " Ds ." I recently decided to stop trying to figure out the “ why ” and even the “ what ” of my problems and figure o

I was talking to someone this morning about how childhood trauma affects us in adulthood. And trauma can be a number of things, right? Sexual/physical abuse, the loss of someone close, chronic medical issues, living with a parent that has a serious mental illness or an addiction issue, severe bullying etc., etc. Remember, we are children when this is happening. Little, tiny people trying to figure out what’s going on around us and why. We are small, but our brains are like sp